Brothers in Arms
by antepathy
Summary: Liberation AU: Springarm/Wing, sticky.  Their budding relationship in five vignettes


_**Brothers in Arms**_  
>NC-17<br>IDW Liberation AU  
>SpringarmWing  
>schmoop, headcanon like whhhhhhhuuuuuh? and sticky. If you're exceptionally squicked by mentorstudent relationships, this may not be for you, though it's not...like that. Because tbh that kinda squicks me part of the headcanon involves mild ref to twincest (Wheelarch/Springarm), that whole Altihex thing and that Wing's name before joining the Knights was Strikewing. (I...wrote that in some story somewhere. Oops. Losing track of my own headcanon.)  
>For <strong>tf_rare_pairing<strong> Five Firsts Challenge.

**First Meeting**

Wheelarch stood up, a little wobbly. "Another round?"

Springarm nodded, energon making his own spark seem to glow and buzz, and everything around him seemed limned with a warm, friendly light.. "Should be our last, though."

"I know. Work tomorrow." A fireflash grin. "Glad you're the responsible one."

"Tough job," Springarm returned, settling his tire back against the padded seat in the booth. They were such a good team, perfect complements. Everyone said so, and it filled him with pride for himself, for Wheelarch, for them both. He watched his twin head toward the bar with a fuzzy pleasant smile on his face. The music was nice here—not too loud, but enough that mechs could dance. One day he'd work up the nerve to dance with Wheelarch. Always, always the fear of being found out, of being slightly too familiar, touching too much.

It was the only sour note in their relationship. But one he'd gladly live without rather than risk losing everything. But it made watching the other dancers bittersweet—how freely they moved, with a sort of delighted abandon.

One of the dancers caught his gaze, his smile brightening. A jet, white and read, engine nacelles accenting his broad shoulders. The dancer detached himself from the crowd, crossing the lighted floor as though moving on a sea of color.

"You look like you want to dance." The jet smiled, gold optics glittering from overcharge, but his movements were still controlled, sinuous.

Springarm shifted against the back. "I'm fine just watching."

"Are you sure?" The smile wavered, uncertain. "I-I wasn't trying to—I mean, I didn't mean that…," the jet stuttered into confusion, shoulder pinions slicking in embarrassment.

The embarrassment was contagious: Springarm felt his own systems heat. "I know. I just…," he faltered, not even certain how to answer.

Wheelarch returned, carrying two cubes. "Am I interrupting something?" A smile still played on the corners of his mouth.

"No!" the jet said, backing away, hurriedly, the stabilizer on one knee bumping the table's underside. "I just…I was going."

"He just wanted to know if I'd like to dance," Springarm said. The jet's discomfort was palpable. It was a kind offer, though.

"Really?" Wheelarch looked between the pair of them, before moving to slide into the other side of the booth. "I think you should." He tilted his chin at the dance floor, grinning.

Springarm felt a surge of affection for his twin, who could read his secret desires so well, so easily. He grinned back, and then turned to the jet. "Offer still open?"

"Of course." The smile stabilized, the pinions lifting from their cuts, as he held out a chivalrous hand to guide Springarm up.

**First Rescue**

They'd been working for four days straight in the smoldering ruins of Altihex, and even Springarm's optimism was beginning to flag.

"This is what Knights do," he said, for the hundredth time, but the words were beginning to sound scratchy and thin, like someone else's voice, someone else's credo. But this, he knew, was when faith was most needed—when its voice seemed distant and hardest to hear.

It was hard to hear anything but pain in this place, pain and death and the kind of horror tinted with surprise. The attack on Altihex had come without warning or provocation, a sudden dual prong of sabotage and assault that would have taken down even a prepared, defended city.

Altihex had been neither.

By the third day, the number of dead pulled from the rubble exceeded the number of those still alive. And even the Order Master in the morning's briefing had said that if anyone were found alive today it would be a miracle.

Springarm believed in miracles. Or, he wanted to believe. So it was his faith, as much as his hands and backstruts, that was sore, tested, but doggedly determined.

"Here," one of the civilian rescue workers said, though the excitement had gone out of his voice days ago. Springarm went over, spotting the unmistakable arch of a door, and in the pile of warped metal, a foot.

They worked in silence for cycles, shifting debris, some mechs automatically forming up behind them to carry away the pieces, others placing themselves to help lift a collapsed ceiling beam when the time came. It was, Springarm thought, the best of Cybertron right here—coming together, no thought of anything other than helping another. His only regret was that it had taken something like this to peel off the things that stood in the way.

"Dead," the volunteer pronounced, on his hands and knees, peeking in under a trestle. His shoulders sagged in defeat.

"It still matters," Springarm said. "It means his spark can be brought to peace."

"There's no peace here," another volunteer murmured. "And nothing will come from this but war."

Springarm frowned, knowing the volunteer was likely right. "Still, we do what we can, what we must. If it must be war," he tightened his mouthplates, thinking of Wheelarch for the first time in a very, very long time, "then let this be how we fight. Let us fight by being all that is good about our kind." He could tell his words fell on deaf audio, lost in the dust kicked up from their rescue attempts.

"Another one," a rescuer said, grimly, his face smeared with dust and smoke. "Was a fire in there. Looked like some," and the mech choked, and Springarm could tell it was not solely from the air, "kind of party."

They had gotten so good at reading these scenes in the last four days: placement and location. And it seemed important, to witness through these clues the last moments of a mech's life. Many had died alone and it felt halfway sacred, halfway an invasion of privacy, to untangle the story of their end. These had been together, and as Springarm ducked under to enter the crushed-ceiling room himself, it felt even worse that these had died together. Some of the charred frames held hands, one or two had curled up by themselves, little balls of agony. The room stank of death and terror.

Springarm sighed, feeling the ash-laden air clog in his intakes. "All right, let's clear them out." The poor sparks. He hoped they could go free, hoped that they were rushing through the opening they had excavated, swirling around them, past them, on their way to freedom, to peace. They had suffered enough—too much.

He moved along the perimeter, tracing what would have once been a rectangular room, the foundation buckled and twisted out of shape. In one corner, the next room had collapsed inward, bringing a section of wall down into the room. Numbly, merely from habit, he began shifting the whited-damaged metal and chunks of plascrete, simply for something to do, something to concentrate on other than the mass of death behind him.

He tugged at a blackened bit of metal. It didn't budge. And when he bent to look more closely, he saw that it was a hand. "Another one," he said, quietly, not even caring if the voice didn't carry. He bent back to the task. Every Cybertronian was sacred, every one deserved the respect of a rescuer's best efforts, even if it was too late.

He shoved lumps of plascrete behind him, using one of his plasma knives to slice through rebar, finally uncovering a twisted, charred airframe, the wingstruts skeletalized. Half the face, when he uncovered it, had been eaten away, the metal rippled from heat, but the other…this mech once had been beautiful. A shock of recognition: that giddy jet, from half a lifetime ago, dragging him by his protesting fingers to the dance floor, seeming to radiate a kind of innocent joy. Springarm had envied him then.

He didn't envy him now.

A spark, from one of the shattered gold optics, and then they both, slowly, swiveled to Springarm's face. He twitched back, startled. It should be impossible, after all this time. "…help," the voice croaked, low on charge.

"I'm here," Springarm said, closing his hands around the one he had freed. "Help is here."

A minute shake of the head. "…help…them. I…couldn't." The optic shutters blinked and Springarm's optics dropped to the chassis. Emblazoned on the white metal, so new that it seemed to glow even through the dust and grime, was a 'Altihex Flight Rescue' badge.

He stroked one finger over the tampograph. "I understand." His voice was thick and heavy with four days of searching, four days of helplessness.

"They're…all dead." Not a question.

Springarm nodded.

"…why not me?" And the thing voice barely managed to carry all the despair in the world.

"Because," Springarm said, leaning to press his mouth to the battered helm, "you have a larger purpose." And he knew in that moment that this mech would be a Knight, as though his own path was merely the foundation for the road this mech would travel.

"…hurts."

Springarm nodded. He remembered the vast pain of Wheelarch's death, his own recovery. "I know."

**First kiss**.

"Watch your stance." Springarm tapped the front thigh with the back of his paint blade. "You need to be able to roll the weight forward smoothly."

Strikewing nodded, earnest, adjusting the angle of his ankle, rocking his weight between his lunge, to try to feel what Springarm was saying. He'd come so far: first his physical recovery, and he'd insisted on Springarm visiting, asking again and again in the Med Fac for the cyclebot, clinging to his hand with his one good one during the worst of the repairs, too terrified to let them shut him down and reboot. Springarm had seen Strikewing fight with himself to be brave and then give up the fight and simply try to endure, and he was more than glad to loan his strength, especially after the story began spilling from the jet's mouth, like a kind of purge:

It had been a party, the jet had said, to celebrate him being accepted for a position in the Flight Rescue Team. All of his friends. And, the jet had said, voice still choking like a flooded engine, he had killed them. If they hadn't come. If they'd stayed home or somewhere else, maybe they would have lived, or at least, not died so horribly. He'd wanted Springarm to bring him a map of the Altihex ruins, so he could plot where they might have been and their odds of survival.

Springarm had refused, braced for the jet to rage and curse at him, but instead Strikewing had merely sank further into himself, his mouth quivering as though letting go of the last smiles it would ever know. And it shattered at Springarm's spark, to see, but he knew that living in regret, in what-ifs, was just a special wall of torture, a prison of the past.

He had lived there, too, for too long. He didn't wish that on Strikewing.

And then the jet had petitioned to join the Knights, his optics fervent, even as he was still being fitted with replacement legs, his hands reaching to sign the document. And Springarm had seen the clarity in the jet's optics—and Dai Atlas had seen it, too—the absolute quiet surety of purpose.

And now, Strikewing was just a few decacycles from taking his formal oath, his hands becoming slowly surer on the hilts of his practice swords. The novice hung near him even on off hours, shyly, not quite daring to make a connection with anyone else. Springarm knew why: when you've lost something you love, you swear you'll never allow yourself to hurt that much again.

It didn't work. It was impossible, and Springarm could feel the trap Strikewing was setting for himself, could feel the ties tying them closer and closer together.

He didn't mind—the similarity in their stories bound him as well.

"Better?" Strikewing asked, practicing the lunge again.

"Yes. Much." He smiled. "You've improved so much."

Strikewing gave a shy shrug. "It's hard. It's hard to teach my systems entirely new things. It feels like they're overwriting the old."

"I remember, yes." He stepped beside Strikewing, flowing flawlessly into the swordform the jet was practicing. "It feels like you're losing your old life, and…you're not sure you want to let it all go."

The sword tip in the jet's hand wavered, his engines making a keening whine. The jet was beyond words, almost cocooned in pain. "…yes," he whispered.

Springarm stepped in, lowering Strikewing's arm with one gentle hand. He tried to think of wise words, something that would erase that taut pain from the silver face, so well burnished that the repair seams no longer showed. But words didn't come, and all he could do was lean in, closer, until his mouthplates touched Strikewing's, feeling them soften against him. And it wasn't perfect, but it was something else, another link, between them.

**First battle**

How far Wing had come, Springarm thought, sparing a glance to the left where the jet was sucking in cool, deep vents, tense with the battle to come. His first combat, the first time to put all of his training to use, all of the practice, the endless swordforms and sparring moving into reality.

It was a very different thing, Springarm knew, to kill. And it should be different, should be painful and separate.

"Ready?"

A nervous laugh. "I hope so." Then the laugh faded, the hands clenching over his energy blade hilts. "Others are counting on me."

"And you are counting on them," Springarm said. "Knights are never truly alone."

The land vehicle jounced over broken pavement, and the Knights in the bay stumbled, swayed with the sudden movement. Wing rode the move, his flyer's reflexes and balance better than most. "I know. And…thank you. For everything." The smile was a phantom, and underneath it, Springarm could see the acceptance of death. Not fear, but openness. The willingness to give his life for something he believed in.

And that was how he knew the jet wouldn't die.

**First Interfacing**

Many decacycles of fighting, so many that their quiet lives in the Cloister seemed almost a different age, as far removed as when Nova Prime ruled Cybertron. Decacycles trying to clear the paths of both armies, to run channels of escape for refugees. It was exhausting and gratifying at the same time: every grateful refugee, clutching a handful of trinkets, made it worth all the pain, all the suffering. The Order Master said that one life saved was worth everything. And so they saved lives, saved at least the chances at lives.

Springarm woke, halfway through their assigned rest cycle, to find Wing nestled against him, curled between his arm and his chassis, face pressed against his shoulder. The jet had come so far. And they were no longer mentor and student, Knight and Novice, but two warriors, equals in skill and equally blooded in combat.

Springarm bent, placing a warm kiss on the helm's crest, wrapping his arm around the chassis, fingers trailing along the folded wingflaps. Wing sighed against him, wriggling closer, his EM field a soft fuzz like velvet over Springarm's blue armor.

His fingers grazed the wing panels gently, teasing the ions into scurrying eddies over the folded metal. Wing shifted again, then tilted his head up, optics glowing dimly, drowsily, from recharge-drooped optic shutters. He seemed on the verge of speaking—they both did—but both withdrew from that edge, and Wing slid forward, up Springarm's body, to match his mouth against the cyclebot's.

It wasn't like their other kiss—chaste and comforting—but warm, inviting, mouthplates parting, glossas shyly exploring, crossing the boundaries. Wing's engines thrummed, his hands clutching over Springarm's body, hasty with desire. Springarm's hand crawled between them, sliding down the complicated Altihexian plates to squeeze the bulk of Wing's interface hatch. The jet shuddered, a cry passing between their linked mouths.

Springarm rolled backward, hauling the jet on top of him, parting his thighs around the white hips in open invitation. Wing squirmed, his EM field flaring with heat and arousal as one knee pushed to the floor.

It had been megacycles, for Springarm, since he'd last taken a lover, but his body, his systems, still remembered: his hips surged up, bumping suggestively against Wing's. He released his own hatch, his free hand tugging at the sensitive wing panels. Wing arched up, optics dimming, his mouth tearing with reluctance from the kiss, his own equipment releasing, his spike silver-slick and rigid with need.

They both gasped, the spike sinking home in Springarm's valve, the calipers clutching needily around it as Wing began moving, rocking slowly, as though trying to draw this moment out, to keep this almost silent connection between them, to hold the future at bay. Springarm planted his feet, cradling Wing, his greenish greaves like leaves over the slowly surging white hips. Wing hovered over Springarm, his gold optics locked with Springarm's blue, losing himself in their azure depths.

"Oh!" Wing cried out, muffling his own voice, the spike jumping against Springarm, jolting them both with a consummation both had desired for longer than either dared admit. Wing cut his vocalizer, aware of the other mechs who had piled in the room with them, small sanctuary against the war that they'd faced before and would face again at sunrise. His voice and his optics seemed the glowing gold of the rising sun, flaring over Springarm as the overload tore at them both, tumbling them from their bodies to a spaceless, bright void where all that was was them, and that was all that mattered.


End file.
